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  • Broken

  • By: Daniel Clay
  • Narrated by: Colin Moody
  • Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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Broken

By: Daniel Clay
Narrated by: Colin Moody
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Editorial reviews

In this harrowing debut, 11-year-old Skunk Cunningham lies in a coma recounting the recent events of her neighborhood. The psychopathic Oswald sisters and their even-more-psychopathic father, Bob, have subjected the street to a cyclone of violence. The storm ultimately pulls in Skunk’s teenaged neighbor Rick Buckley, after one of the sisters accuses him of rape, and Rick becomes the "Broken" Buckley for which the book is named. While some listeners might find the grim procession of events dispiriting, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Performer Colin Moody does an excellent job conveying the emotion of the events and finding the right voice for each character.

Publisher's Summary

A brilliant and utterly original debut novel.

Skunk Cunningham is an 11-year-old girl in a coma. She has a loving dad, an absent mother and a brother who plays more X-Box than is good for him. She also has the neighbors from hell: the five Oswald girls and their thuggish father Bob, vicious bullies all of them, whose reign of terror extends unchallenged over their otherwise quiet suburban street.

And yet terrifying though they undoubtedly are, the stiletto-wearing, cider-swilling Oswald girls are also sexy - so when Saskia asks shy, virginal Rick Buckley for a ride in his new car, he can't believe his luck. Too bad that Saskia can't keep her big mouth shut. When, after a quick fumble, she broadcasts Rick's deficiencies to anyone who will listen, it puts ideas into her younger sister's silly head - ideas that will see Rick dragged off to prison, humiliated, and ultimately, in his father's words, 'broken' by the experience.

From her hospital bed, Skunk guides us through the events that follow, as Saskia's small act of thoughtlessness slowly spreads through the neighborhood in a web of increasing violence. Skunk watches as her shabby, hardworking father finds love, only for her courageous, idealistic teacher to lose it; as poor 'Broken' Buckley descends into madness, while across the street her brother Jed makes his first adolescent forays into sex; and as her own gentle romance with soft-hearted, tough-talking Dillon struggles to survive against a backdrop that seamlessly combines the sublime and the ridiculous. As we inch ever closer to the mystery behind her coma, Skunk's innocence becomes a beacon by which we navigate a world as comic as it is tragic, and as effortlessly engaging as it is ultimately uplifting, in this brilliant and utterly original debut novel.

©2008 Daniel Clay (P)2008 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

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